Indian River middle school girls get chance to explore careers in math, science

J.G. WALLACE/SPECIAL TO TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS
Olso Middle School students Lyvenda Toussaint (left) and Fiona Dorval work on making a stable square cube at the STEM Summit held Saturday by the American Association of University Women. AAUW members Martha Kucinsky (left) and Dr. Linda MacDonald watch the girls at work.

FORT PIERCE — Geek is chic. At least that was the message behind Saturday's STEM Summit, a project organized by the Vero Beach branch of the American Association of University Women.

The summit brought together about 80 seventh- and eighth-grade girls from Gifford, Oslo, Storm Grove and Sebastian River middle schools at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute for a seven-hour program exploring careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

According to event organizer Lois Miles, despite strong test scores in math and sciences, young women are not as readily drawn to careers in those fields as their male peers.

"We convened this STEM summit because research our of our national office indicates while girls are testing as well as boys in this age group, they are not choosing the more difficult careers," Miles said.

The association's research determined girls don't like to be labeled as,"smart," and they often don't get the same encouragement from teachers and parents to pursue fields like mathematics, engineering and technology, she said.

Students attended a series of lectures and hands-on workshops. Rossana Ortiz of Vero Beach attended with her daughter Soledad, an eighth grader at Oslo Middle School. "I think this is good for young women to have this information," Ortiz said. "It gives them an introduction and ideas where to go to pursue these careers."

The hands-on projects included a presentation on exploring the deep sea by Edie Widder, CEO at the Ocean Research and Conservation Association in Fort Pierce; a math challenge involving straws and paper clips to build a stable cube; and an engineering lab given by female Florida Atlantic University students that produced ice cream.

Girls also took their turn at trying to design a heat shield in a science presentation given by Theresa Rockwood, science curriculum specialist with the Indian River County School District.

Students quickly grasped the challenges faced by NASA engineers. As their team worked on a second design, Sebastian River student Casey Cole observed, "It's better if your materials are bent so the heat has to travel from the material, across thin air, and through the material again."

As her team watched Rockwood test their design with a blowtorch, Cole said, "This is science, man."